‘If I had my time again I’d have made radical changes earlier’

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Desmond Hudson, the outgoing chief executive of the Law SocietyBen Gurr/Times Newspapers

Last updated at 12:01AM, September 4 2014

Desmond Hudson, outgoing chief executive of the Law Society, is unrepentant, he tells Frances Gibb

It’s been a bruising few months but the ever-ebullient Desmond Hudson was
packing up his desk last week in good form. He was not forced out as chief
executive of the Law Society, he insists; and if there are regrets, they are
few. “Part of me is demob happy at the idea of not having that ping ping of
emails in the inbox. That is quite attractive. Then I think — what am I
going to do?”

Hudson, himself a solicitor, is something of a bogeyman to some lawyers,
chiefly over his “deal” with ministers on criminal legal aid. Yet the

Court of Appeal
Published: March 3, 2015
In re M and Others (Children) (Abduction: Child’s Objections)
Before Lord Justice Richards, Lady Justice Black and Lord Justice Ryder
Judgment: January 27, 2015
When a court was determining whether, for the purposes of article 13 of the
Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction 1980,
a child who objected to being returned to his country of habitual residence
had attained the age and degree of maturity at which it was appropriate to
take account of his views, the exercise required was a straightforward
examination of whether the terms of the Convention had been satisfied
without the use of any technical subsidiary tests